Everyone moved out from the base.
Adrian followed Torvain and his assigned group, which included Kaya and two other Mid Rule Stage disciples.
The moment they exited the structure, the environment revealed itself fully. The land around them was barren and desolate, stretching endlessly like a vast desert. Above and around them, chaotic layers of energy storms churned relentlessly. These storms did not follow any predictable pattern. New waves of turbulence formed at random, colliding and dispersing in all directions, only to reform moments later. Visibility dropped sharply beyond a few kilometers, as shifting curtains of distorted energy obscured everything farther away.
Adrian felt a strange sense of familiarity. This was a condition he had last experienced back on Earth, long before he became a Stellar, before he possessed a domain.
Under normal circumstances, this situation would have been impossible. Once a cultivator formed a domain, they could perceive everything within their domain effortlessly. Even an SSS-rank being without a domain could sweep an entire planet with their perception in moments. If this were an ordinary planet, even a Stellar could expand their domain and scan the surface instantly.
But here, even Rule Stage cultivators, who were much stronger, were reduced to something close to mortals navigating hostile terrain.
The chaotic mixture of mana, divine essences, and unstable spatial currents suppressed perception itself.
As Adrian observed this, the others had already started to move in formation. Lara's group positioned itself at the center. Maelis led her group on the right. Torvain's group, which included Adrian, took the left flank.
The three groups aligned themselves deliberately, maintaining balance and distance.
Everyone wrapped themselves in crimson divine essence and lifted into the air. They treated the environment like the void, using their essence to propel themselves rather than walking across the unstable surface below. This was the fastest and most efficient method of movement under these conditions.
Adrian followed suit. He wrapped his body in Ruination divine essence and lifted himself into the air. The green-grey energy coiled around his limbs, responding sluggishly compared to his Source. He deliberately avoided using the Source for now. He knew revealing it was inevitable at some point, so he wasn't doing this to hide his Source now. Rather, he wanted practical experience using his Ruination divine concept. If he was going to create divine concepts for his people, he needed to learn how to master a divine concept, and this was the best opportunity to refine control under pressure.
Torvain noticed Adrian immediately. This was the first time he had directly sensed Adrian's divine essence. From its structure alone, he could tell Adrian's divine concept was comparable in tier to his own. Lara and Maelis sensed it as well.
And this sight confused them. The sect leader's message had stated that Adrian's divine concept was of a higher tier than their sect's. So why were they sensing a Mid-tier divine concept now?
None of them realized Adrian had not yet fully mastered this divine concept and that his authority was only at the Early Rule Stage level. Adrian was not using his divine domain or authority, so there was no indication of his true mastery. They could only tell the tier of the concept.
They assumed Adrian was using his secondary divine concept.
"Forward," Torvain commanded.
The three groups advanced at identical speed but along slightly diverging vectors, maintaining controlled separation of several kilometers. Their paths overlapped strategically. Adrian quickly understood the logic.
Torvain's group remained within Lara's perception range. Lara's group maintained oversight of both Torvain and Maelis. Maelis's group covered the right flank. Each group remained within the perception range of at least one other group.
This formation ensured each group could support another, intercept threats without the need for long-distance travel.
Kaya drifted closer to Adrian's position, her pale blue features impassive. She asked, "You're the one who brought Lyra back?"
"Yes."
"Then you have my gratitude. She's my cousin."
Adrian nodded at her. The resemblance was subtle but present, the same elongated ears, the same shade of skin.
Kaya's expression softened fractionally. She said nothing more, drifting back into formation.
The two other disciples in Torvain's group maintained distance from Adrian. One was a humanoid male with grey skin and three eyes arranged vertically across his forehead. The other was a female with crimson scales covering her arms and neck.
As they traveled further, the terrain below remained unchanged. Endless barren ground stretched beneath them, offering no landmarks and no indication of significance.
Then, gradually, something changed. Movement became heavier.
Adrian felt resistance building against his divine essence, as though the air itself thickened. His speed dropped incrementally. The others experienced the same.
Kaya's expression tightened. The three-eyed disciple grunted, his essence flaring brighter as he pushed harder to maintain altitude.
As they continued flying forward, the resistance against their divine essence increased steadily. Some disciples struggled to maintain altitude, their bodies sinking lower until a few were forced to land on the ground.
The scaled female dropped first, her feet striking the barren surface with a dull thud. She stumbled slightly, then straightened, her face flushed with exertion.
"What's happening?" the three-eyed disciple muttered, his altitude dropping as well.
Soon, the entire formation halted, and the three groups drifted closer together to assess the situation.
The scaled female spoke first, her voice strained. "Elder, I can't maintain flight using divine essence alone anymore. The energy around us is growing denser and more aggressive. It's resisting movement."
She gestured at the churning storms above, "It feels like trying to swim through sand."
Lara nodded calmly, "There is likely a damaged divine formation nearby. I think its essence crystals are leaking, and when mixed with the already chaotic mana here, it creates this effect."
She paused briefly, scanning the barren landscape, then added, "This is not necessarily bad. Divine formations are never placed randomly. If one exists here, it means this location is important. It could even be the alchemy garden."
Torvain's jaw tightened, "Or it could be a trap."
"Possible," Lara acknowledged, "But we have to proceed regardless."
A disciple from Lara's group spoke up, a lean male, "Elder, this is the same area I encountered during my scouting earlier. The only way to fly here is by using authority to push the chaotic energies away. Without it, movement becomes impossible."
Maelis frowned, her crimson robes rippling as she crossed her arms, "So it's come to that."
She shook her head before continuing, "We expected this already, so let's just proceed as planned. We'll use authority, but we rotate breaks to recover mana and willforce."
"Agreed," Torvain said, "We can't afford to burn through our reserves before we even find the garden."
Everyone murmured their assent. One by one, they activated their divine domains. Crimson light flared around each cultivator, manifesting in different shades and intensities depending on their mastery.
As a disciple expanded his domain slightly, he immediately felt resistance. The chaotic energy in the air pressed back violently, clashing with his divine essence like opposing tides.
His face went pale, "It's fighting back."
Lara raised her voice sharply, "Keep your domains small, just enough to cover your body. Expanding further will waste mana and willforce unnecessarily."
The disciples followed her instructions. That same disciple compressed his domain tightly around himself, the crimson aura condensing into a thin shell barely a hand's width from his skin. He then used his authority to command reality to push the surrounding chaotic energy away.
Instantly, control returned to his divine essence, and he felt as though he were flying through empty void once more.
However, maintaining this state required continuous authority expenditure.
Adrian activated his Ruination divine domain and attempted the same approach. The green-grey essence wrapped around him like a second skin, and he issued the command for reality to yield.
Immediately, he felt his mana consumption spike noticeably higher than he'd anticipated.
His brow furrowed. That was when he recalled something he had read in the forums. Cultivators with lower authority could still command reality, but doing so required significantly more mana and willforce. Efficiency only scaled with mastery.
Adrian glanced around. Everyone else here was at least Mid Rule Stage, each possessing no less than thirty-five percent authority. Adrian, however, was using a divine concept he had barely begun to master. His Ruination authority stood at only eighteen percent.
So naturally, the cost was far higher.
Without hesitation, Adrian switched to his Source domain.
He abandoned the attempt to train Ruination here. This environment was not suitable for experimentation. Wasting mana and willforce now was unacceptable.
The green-grey essence dissolved, replaced by the white-grey radiance of the Source.
Even with the Source domain active, Adrian could feel the oppressive divine essences weighing against him. His current Source purity alone was not enough to counteract the environment entirely.
So he too used authority. But he kept it suppressed, deliberately limiting it to seventy percent. The remaining thirty percent was left to reality itself.
The moment he did so, every elder and disciple turned toward him.
The disciples felt it first. Shock rippled through them as they sensed an authority greater than any of the elders present. Their domains flickered, instinctively recoiling from the pressure.
Kaya's eyes widened, "That's—"
"Too powerful!" the three-eyed disciple breathed.
The scaled female took an involuntary step back, her divine essence wavering.
The elders reacted differently. They were not shocked by the raw authority alone since they already knew that Adrian possessed higher authority than them and had a primary divine concept. What shook them was the concept itself, that white-grey divine essence.
It felt heavier and fundamentally superior to their own concepts. The sensation was unmistakable. This was the pressure they had only ever felt from cultivators wielding an ultimate-tier divine concept.
Until now, Lara, Torvain, and Maelis had never considered this possibility. The sect leader had said it's higher in tier, but even she didn't know exactly which tier it was in. And back in the sect, Adrian declared seventy percent authority, which they had suspected that he was understating his true authority. After all, only someone who had fully mastered their divine concept could hide it completely.
Even with all the suspicions they had, they had only assumed he was a cultivator wielding a high-tier divine concept, which meant that Adrian should possess eighty percent authority at full mastery, not seventy.
Never had they ever thought that his concept's tier to be at the Ultimate-tier! But what they sensed now made the truth undeniable. The divine essence they were sensing was not high-tier. The weight, the purity, the way reality itself seemed to hesitate before it, these were not characteristics of a high-tier concept.
So if Adrian's concept was ultimate-tier and he could suppress it entirely, then he had fully mastered it. Full mastery at that level meant ninety percent authority.
What kind of being did that make him?
Lara's throat went dry. "A major sect powerhouse," she whispered.
It was a powerhouse from a major sect! That realization sent a chill through the elders. They saw each other, and every single one of them reassessed Adrian completely.